Russian punk has a wonderfully edgey history. In the 1970s when punk rock began to show the true musical opposition that is inherent within the raw musical format, the Soviet Union tried exceedingly hard to supress this kind of resistance within its own borders. However it didn't work that well, and soon the records of the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, the Rolling Stones, and others along with it. Soon Russian kids all over the Soviet Union where picking up drums, guitars, and basses, forming bands in the courtyards of their stagnant cities and composing raw, nervous, frantic, explosive music that sounded like hell to the authorities. It also forshadowed a future of Russian music and the Russian state itself: the authorities realized that the future would be beyond their control.

By the 80s the youths in their teens and 20s where forming punk bands. The alternative scene of music once dominated by the bards like Vysotsky was given way to radical figures such as Bashlachev, who wrote lyrics for the group September. Such bands as Sektor Gaza, Nol, and Tarakany began popping up near the end of the 1980s, groups such as DDT formed a cult following of today's teenagers who recite their magnetic lyrics like prayers.

And so as the Soviet Union came crushing down, along with it shattering the pride and identity of the Russian people (especially the youth of the 80s born into the USSR and raised under capitalism), bringing in drugs, prostitution, organized crime and a defunct social sysem. The rules of society where turned upside down, thus bringing in the atmosphere of despair, dilapidation, anger towards a failed system — all prime recepies for punk.

Hardcore quickly evolved, and unlike the hardcore of its birthplace the USA, the tone of the USSR was much more nihilistic, depressing, and ever evolving. The skill of bass, guitar, and drums was very important in this method of music, and melody - a fundemantal part of all Russian music - assumed an important status.

Thus in 1998 a group of Peter punks (Peter is short for St. Petersburg) got together and formed Dekabr. By 1999 the band was organized, since then the group put out 3 demos. In 2003 the St. Petersburg label Caravan Records came out with the first CD, titled after itself DEKABR, which in Russian translates into December. The band plays what its fans call Dekabr-core, a proud Russian alteration of punk, the energy, the raw sounds of electricity that the USA gave the world is toppled with the breadth and scope of the Russian verse, composition, and a harsh brooding voice of Myha, the lead singer and writer of the band.

The new CD contains 12 songs, of which the most intense are (4) My Zhdiem (We Wait), (6) Zemlya (Earth), (8) Oi-e. The band is young, and it's still climbing the incredibly hard punk scene in the former Soviet Republics, however no doubt it's gaining support. Punk.Ru has it listed as a Peter band on its list, alongside with other Russian bands more mainstream like the Tarakany.

The strongest aspect of the band is the voice and drums, I would say. In the screams and vocal gestures there are glimpses of Vysotsky's bluesy struggle and a sense of a different path that Russian punk is taking, going back to more raw and clearer genre and finally away from the mainstream pop/punk approach that took hold of punk like a virus in the mid 1990s to this day with the invasion of bands like sum41, blink182, and other mainstream frauds. Dekabr is proud in its edge, and its open hostility to fraud, we can see the strive for quality in their demo recordings alone. If the first album suffers from anything it's perhaps the same energy that flows throughout the album, there are moments of similiarity between songs which some impatient listeners often find annoying. However the skill with which it is done is unquestioned.

Dekabr is a great new addition to the international punk/hardcore scene.